‘Robinson Crusoe would have found his kindling on the beach,’ she teased.

‘Ah, but Robinson Crusoe didn’t make boats. Find me some driftwood, and I’ll have a better use for it than burning it.’

‘Aren’t you going to catch your own fish?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have brought lamb from the supermarket, and vegetables from my garden. And here is another thing Robinson Crusoe wouldn’t have had.’ He produced a cool box and handed her an ice-cold Mythos beer. ‘Now go and find that driftwood!’

Laughing at her own wickedness to be happily drinking at eleven, Penny walked along the beach looking for wood swept in by the sea. Instead her eye was caught by shards of green glass, washed to a frosted opacity, their sharpness blunted by the tumbling of the waves. A few yards further were two more, this time cobalt blue. Feeling suddenly excited, she looked for more. Nikos had told her that Kyri was on the popular sea route from Crete to Athens, and here was the evidence. Not sunken treasure, but bottles thrown overboard and broken up by the sea into these jagged pieces, which over time had acquired a beauty of their own. To her delight she found a tangle of old rope in a faded shade of greeny-blue and extracted a long piece of string, which she used to deftly bind up her pieces of glass until she had made a rough necklace. When she had ten or so pieces, she tied the string round her neck and headed back to Nikos.

‘What, no driftwood?’ he asked. ‘What happened to Robinson Crusoe?’

‘He found this precious jewellery instead,’ she laughed, pointing to her necklace.

Nikos put down his fork and stared. He got to his feet and walked towards her, a look of immense tenderness tinged with loving pride in his eyes. ‘My Penelope, only you could take broken glass and turn it into something beautiful.’ He swept her into his arms and kissed her.

In the moment his arms were around her, she felt a vibration in the pocket of the dress she had slipped back on. Her phone. And she had the strongest intuition who it would be. It was as if her husband somehow knew what she was feeling and was determined to sabotage it. But she wasn’t going to let him. She took the phone from her pocket and, without even looking at it, tossed it into one of the bags.

‘Don’t you want to answer it?’ asked Nikos. ‘Maybe it’s something important.’